Negra
by MuckingFagic
Summary: The street price of cocaine has dropped and suspecting the involvement of an up and coming drug cartel, CHERUB's resident sociopath is sent in to investigate. What happens when a web of crime leading back to the British government is uncovered? ON HIATUS  24/08 - 01/12
1. Chapter 1

Hey! Look here! A cover!

In case you're wondering, this is a character based off the Cherub Forum's RP.

Anyway, to begin.

* * *

><p>"Tree"<p>

"Tree"

"Wall"

"Wall"

"Page"

"Page"

"Hair"

"Hair"

"Pen"

"Freud"

"Love"

"Freud"

"Rage"

"Freud"

"Sex"

"Freud!"

"Pointless"

"Jung"

Pinching the bridge of his nose, the psychiatrist peered over the top of the clipboard that he had previously been making notes on. Well, that wasn't strictly true. The only thing new piece of information written on the clipboard since the last session was the word 'INSUFFERABLE', a word in red block capitals which he had been constantly underlining in the last 55 minutes. All because of the 15 year old currently lying on the sofa opposite.

"Huey, you are aware that you don't have to lie down for these sessions?"

"I know that. I just feel that if you're going to psychoanalyze me, the least I can do is get stuck into the cliché, no?" The boy called Huey replied. "I could get into other positions for you Dr Lang but for that, you'd have to buy me dinner first."

No words made up Lang's response, just a long sigh, which more often than not preceded the onset of a headache. The beleaguered psychiatrist was surprised that the session had lasted almost the whole hour without the headaches which characterised spending large amounts of time with Huey Newton in a closed room. The agent in question had now shifted his position so that his black jeans were draped over the back of the sofa and his neatly shaped afro was gently bouncing off of the wood panelled flooring of the office. Lang opened his mouth to question this behaviour but quickly decided against it. It wouldn't do him any good to get one of those headaches on a cold January morning like today's.

He sighed again and flicked through the papers stacked on the table on the right hand side of him. Finding the relevant page, he filled in all the appropriate data and signed his name after ticking a box labelled "FIT TO CONTINUE SERVICE".

Lang always hesitated before ticking that box for Huey. Over all of his sessions, Lang had noted that there was something hollow present in Huey's eyes, as if he were analysing the whole world like a complex calculation. However Lang always relented, citing Huey's troubled past as the cause of any such observations. Like many other CHERUB agents, Newton was apprehensive to talk about parts of his past and years of sessions had yielded no new information.

"Okay Huey, that will be all for this week" Lang said, removing his glasses with one hand and rubbing his eyes with the other. "I'll forward the relevant documents to your handler as per usual."

Huey took this as his cue to haphazardly roll off of the sofa and he landed on his feet a second later, straightening his now creased black military jacket before firing off a sloppy salute at Dr Lang as means of farewell. He made his way silently out of the main building, passing numerous staff members and other teenagers along the way; the faces of whom he took little notice of.

Huey wrapped his scarf around his neck and zipped his jacket up to the top before opening the doors to the outside world. The last few days had been particularly cold and there were no signs of it letting up any time soon. He braced himself against the wind as he walked down the long winding path that led to the Mission Control building, placing each foot carefully as not to slip on the transparently glazed pathway. It took him less than five minutes to reach the banana shaped building, entering the warm interior after scanning his retina using the often malfunctioning security equipment.

It was as Huey removed his scarf that he heard someone calling his name. Spinning 180 degrees on the balls of his loafer clad feet, he made eye contact with the source of the noise. Standing in the middle of the lobby of the Mission Control building, holding a stack of documents was the person he was here to meet, a Mission Controller by the name of Gabriela Marquez.

If he didn't know any better, he'd say that he and Gabriela were somehow related. Aside from their matching skin tone, Huey and Gabriela both had similar facial features, the most pronounced being the defined jaw line and piercing brown eyes. Except she had long brown hair tied in a crude ponytail whereas Huey had a messy afro. In a small way, Gabriela reminded him of his mother.

_"Yes but your mother's dead. Most of her has probably become maggot food. Doubt she'd still have those eyes."_

He chuckled to himself, internally commending his brain for an excellent display of morbid humour.

"What's so funny, Huey?" she asked from behind the stack of papers before beckoning him to follow her to her office.

"Oh, just thinking about a joke I made during my last psych session" he lied, easily. No need for her to know those thoughts. "Had Dr Lang in such stitches that he let me leave early."

"So that explains why you're here so early then. I wasn't expecting you for at least another five minutes" She replied, balancing the papers on one arm whilst she fished the keys for her office door out of her pocket. Huey grabbed the top half of the documents, in an attempt to lessen the load on the young staff member.

"Why thank you Huey" Gabriela said as she opened the door and walked in with Huey behind her. "If you take a look at the fourth folder, you'll see what you're in store for."

Huey flipped over the folders in his hand till he found the one she was referring to. Leaning on the wall of her office, he read the briefing enclosed.

*****CLASSIFIED MISSION BRIEFING*****  
><strong>FOR HUEY NEWTON<strong>  
><strong>THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED WITH A RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION TAG.<strong>  
><strong>ANY ATTEMPT TO REMOVE IT FROM THE MISSION CONTROL BUILDING WILL SET OFF AN ALARM.<strong>  
><strong>DO NOT PHOTOCOPY OR MAKE NOTES.<strong>

BACKGROUND

1976 in Medellin, Colombia was marked by the formation of the one of the most influential criminal syndicates in history, the Medellin Cartel; run by one of the most famous criminals in history, Pablo Escobar.

Operating out of the mountainous Antioquia region of Colombia, the Medellin Cartel was able to become the leading cartel in terms of wealth and influence. All of this was achieved by means of numerous illegal activities, including people trafficking, money laundering, extortion, kidnapping, murder, arms trafficking and most importantly, drug trafficking into the US and Europe.

This went on for 15 years until 1993, when the Colombian government, helped by the US, successfully dismantled the cartel by imprisoning or hunting down its members. Though this marked a triumph for Columbia in the war against the drug cartels, it is said that Escobar was able to amass a fortune of nearly £20,000,000,000 before he was gunned down in the back streets of a middle-class barrio in Medellin.

SPLINTERING

The disbandment of the Medellin Cartel did not signal the end of drugs coming out of Latin America. Splinter groups comprised of former members of the Medellin Cartel and other criminals all vied for power in the wake of the cartel's destruction but the majority of them were met with extreme force from the Colombian government.

The splinter groups that survived were either assimilated into one of the other, larger cartels or forced into hiding, severely limiting their criminal capabilities.

THE CALACITO CARTEL

In early 2007, a botched police raid on a small drug trafficking gang alerted the police to the existence of the Calacito Cartel. Intelligence points to Ricardo Mosquera, previously a mid-level enforcer in the Medellin Cartel being the head of this splinter group.

The group has been supplying cocaine to smaller criminal groups and any attempts to infiltrate the organisation by police and intelligence services have been met with failure. As such, it is unknown both how the cartel is financing the operation and the logistics of transporting cocaine of such high quantity without being caught out.

MANUEL ESTEVADO

Intelligence suggests that Manuel Estevado is a high-ranking member in the Calacito Cartel and acts as accountant for the Mosquera's operation, organising the laundering of money from London to Colombia whilst maintaining the façade of an accountant for many businesses in Islington, including Mosquera's nightclub 'El Pambrota'. He lives with his wife and two children in Canonbury and due to this, is seen as a highly suitable target.

CHERUB'S ROLE

A single agent and Mission Controller will be inserted in the neighbourhood that Estevado resides in. The agent will be then required to integrate themself in the life of Estevado's children - Maya (15) and Luis (16). It is from this point that the agent should be able to infiltrate the organisation and pass information regarding the financiers of the Calacito Cartel back to the appropriate liaison within the police.

_The CHERUB Ethics Committee has declared this mission to be **MEDIUM RISK**._

Due to the connection with Colombian cartels, there is a very high possibility that Estevado and other Calacito members will be armed.

THE USE OF CLASS A SUBSTANCES WILL RESULT IN EXPULSION FROM CHERUB.

AGENTS ARE REMINDED OF THEIR RIGHT TO REFUSE THE MISSION.

_"Colombians selling Cocaine out of Canonbury? You don't get alliteration like that every day"_ Huey thought to himself, bringing the briefing up to mask the smile that threatened to light up his face. _"Yeah, this looks like it could be fun."_

His internal dialogue was cut short by his Mission Controller, who held photos of the known members of the cartel and the Estevado family in her hands.

"So Huey, have you got any questions regarding this mission?"

He turned to face Gabriela once he had regained his composure, the obscurant document moved away from his face.

"Why aren't MI5 or MI6 handling this?"

"The Calacito Cartel is extremely difficult to penetrate." Gabriela said, flicking through the small quantity of photos. "They've survived this long without getting caught out and it's for good reason. Ricardo Mosquera is a very cautious man, almost to the point of paranoia. We're only sending in one agent to minimise suspicion. If you accept, you'll be in the same year group as the Estevado's children to make infiltration as easy as possible. "

He had heard enough. The mission seemed simple enough, had the possibility of a bit of danger and a whole lot of fun. It would certainly be more interesting that being stuck on campus.

"Alright" Huey spoke after a short pause. "I'm in."

* * *

><p><strong>Note<strong>: The first few chapters are relatively short. Apologies. They do get longer after!

Please feel free to review!


	2. Chapter 2

"_Huey...Miralas! Huey!_"

He jolted awake, banishing that particular dream into nothingness as the cacophony of voices slowly subsided into the deepest recesses of his mind. He and Gabriela had left early the next morning for London, the long Sunday morning drive in the Range Rover Sport made worse by her attempts to engage Huey in meaningless conversation, which he rebuffed effectively by feigning sleep. It was after maybe half an hour of this silence that he did in fact fall asleep; his head nestled in the hollow of his shoulder.

Huey shook the fatigue out of his legs as he exited the now stationary car and had his reflexes tested as a British Gas van swerved down the poorly gritted road that was far too narrow for both it and the parked cars on either side, forcing it to straddle both lanes and make Huey press up against the tinted windows of the Range Rover to avoid being clipped by the van's wing mirror.

"_That's one way of getting the ol' adrenal glands pumping._" Huey thought to himself.

"_You know I don't enjoy juxtaposition between medical terminology and old American vernacular. Please don't do that again._" His thoughts continued, as way of reply.

"_Don't get snippy with me just because you've had that dream again._"

He was right. He was always right. That was one of things he enjoyed about himself, total precision. That dream had been playing in his mind for the last few weeks on and off, just a voice that reverberated around in his mind whenever he nodded off. Huey had no time to dwell on it however; he had a mission to get started on.

They had been set up in a modest semi-detached house that was one road over from where Manuel Estevado lived with his family. All the houses in the area were pretty similar and definitely were not places you expected someone who was a high up in a profitable cocaine racket to be living. It was certainly good enough for Gabriela Lopez and her son Huberto, who had recently moved into the area following her messy divorce.

Gabriela had already moved her baggage into the house and Huey followed suit, grabbing the long black duffel bag that held his clothes and other essential items from the boot of the car and brought it into his new home. As he walked up the wooden stairs, Gabriela pointed him to the direction of his room, she having already commandeered the bigger one facing the garden. He spent about twenty minutes getting to know the new house after he packed before he realised that he hadn't eaten anything since after he had left the Mission Control building the day previous. Raiding the fridge, it seemed that CHERUB hadn't been kind enough to stock the kitchen for them. Luckily for him, Gabriela was also on the same wavelength.

"Huey, I've left some money on the counter by the door" she shouted from the bathroom upstairs. "Can you go get us a few things for dinner and breakfast? I'll go shopping when you're at school."

"Alright" he said, more to himself than anything as the upstairs shower started, drowning out his voice. He picked up the notes and stuffed them into his jacket pocket. Stepping outside, he watched the branches of the trees lining the road sway in the cold wind as he thought to himself for a few moments on where to travel to.

Having spent hours preparing for the mission yesterday, Huey was confident that he knew the local area like the back of his hand. What he didn't have any knowledge on was which of the many of the shops nearby were closed due to it being Sunday.

Eventually he found a small shop that had only the most essential items which, thankfully, included basic microwave meals. He bought two of these and some other items, like fruit, eggs and a large baguette of bread that had been reduced to 29p and left the store after bagging his items.

The daylight hours were still ridiculously short due to it being the beginning of January. Huey had walked into the shop less than an hour earlier in the post-midday sun and now as he exited, dusk had swept over the horizon, the absence of daylight chilling the streets further. He guessed that it couldn't have been later than 3pm when he left the house but he gave it little thought then and there, merely zipping up his hooded top and jacket and made a beeline home.

Walking quickly with both bags dangling at either side of him, Huey descended the alley that linked the high street with the rows of identical houses that made up the network of roads that his house was on. Briskly walking down, he noted that there were three hooded figures occupying the alley, propping themselves up on the wall, their cigarettes twinkling like orange fireflies in the dark. Just as he passed by them, a lone voice broke the silence.

"Bruv, you got the time?"

Huey turned his head slightly, slowing his pace to glance his eyes over the one who had decided to disrupt the placidity of his journey home. Dressed in an all grey tracksuit, this boy didn't really look intimidating. He couldn't have been more than 17 years old with that ridiculous wisp of brown hair hanging from his chin. The second one looked far more of a threat, attempting to stare menacingly at Huey, hands kept firmly in his white Adidas jacket pockets. Huey knew an act when he saw one and the third lad, clad in Reebok attire, looked about as menacing as a kitten. They all had phones out. Quite clearly, one of them knew the time.

Shaking his head slowly at the first boy, Huey attempted to continue on his way but found himself unable to as the three boys stepped into positions surrounding him. The first one, quite possibly the leader of this little ménage à trois, spoke again.

"Gimme your phone and your wallet!"

The boy grabbed Huey when he shook his head in the negative and slammed him up against the wall, knocking the shopping bags out of his hands. His two cohorts joined so that they were standing in a semicircle around Huey.

It seemed rather blasé to term them by their different coloured clothing. Huey had much better names for his 3 new friends. The one who had him held up against the wall and who initialised alleyway conversation would be known as Id. The second boy who, from his jacket pocket had now produced a small penknife that he held to Huey's stomach he would call Ego and the third lad, the one that seemed a tad less comfortable with this activity and whose eyes were alternating between looking at the other two and staring at Huey, he would be called Super-ego.

"I ain't gonna ask you again, gimme your phone and your wallet!" Id snapped, his breath visible in the frigid atmosphere, the alcoholic tobacco vapour wafting over Huey.

Moving quickly, Huey jumped up and used the wall he was pressed up against as suitable support to launch a two footed kick to his sternum, sending Id flying to the floor on the other side of the alley a few metres away and pushing the other two back a small distance. Landing on his feet, Huey quickly dodged the swipe that Ego sent his way with the knife that now didn't seem so small. Dodging again as the knife came around once more, he grabbed Ego's arm and through the use of his own momentum against him, threw Ego into the slowly advancing form of Super-ego causing them both to fall to the ground.

While this was happening, Id had risen and armed himself with what appeared to be quite a heavy spanner that he had presumably located on the alley floor. Huey saw this out of the corner of his eye and started to edge backwards, cautious to remain out of striking distance.

"_Really?_" Huey thought to himself as he stepped over the foodstuffs that had been strewn over the alleyway by his new playmates. "_Who in their right mind leaves a spanner in an alleyway? That's just impolite._"

Thinking quickly, he saw what he could respond with. Hooking his right foot under the plastic wrapped baguette, Huey kicked the solid bread-like object up and caught it in his hands, adopting a low stance, ready to strike with his breaded staff. His first opportunity came as Id lunged forward with the metal object in hand, missing his target by a great margin.

Huey took this mistake as an excuse to bring the tip of the baguette down on the back of Id's knees, causing him to buckle and then spinning the baguette around to land a blow to the face of his lead attacker. Id crashed face first into the ground, stunned, his weapon sliding further down into the dark alley . There was no time for Huey to pause as Ego and Super-ego were now rushing towards him, the former still brandishing his knife. That, however, was taken care of with a jab from the baguette, Ego with the next well placed strike to the testicular region and Super-ego with a final horizontal strike to the throat.

It was with this that the bread staff snapped in two, the strength bestowed upon it by numerous days spent in the shop past its sell by date finally bested by the windpipe of Super-ego, who was lying on the floor, gasping for breath. Huey pocketed the knife that had landed in front of his feet, not wanting to be the victim of a surprise attack.

Turning around, Huey had little time to process the fact that Id, who had recovered from the barrage of bread-based blows, had snuck up on him and was in the middle of throwing a haymaker, one that would have connected if it were not for Huey's CHERUB trained reflexes. Arching his back with baguette half still in hand, he dodged Id's fist with extreme flexibility and grabbed Id by the hair on the nape of his neck which resulted in the boy flipping onto his back as Huey regained his fully vertical posture.

Brandishing the remaining half of bread, Huey slammed it into Id's open mouth whilst shaking the index finger on his left hand as if to warn him off any more action. Id's terrified eyes were the only response Huey got and he responded by removing the crusty bread end from the boy's mouth, wiping the saliva on the grey tracksuit of his would-be mugger.

They were still on the ground in various states of malaise but Huey ignored the three as he collected the food back into the unbroken shopping bags and walked back to the house, merely picking at the delicious white interior of his improvised staff and popping the morsels into his mouth. Entering the house, Gabriela's voice could be heard from above him as he began unpacking the shopping in the kitchen.

"You took a while. What happened Huey?" She questioned from the landing of the first floor.

"Nothing. Just got lost in my thoughts" he replied, putting the four unbroken eggs into the fridge whilst discarding the other two. Gabriela stood in the doorway that connected the kitchen to the modestly furnished dining room, eyebrows piqued in a (Huey assumed) questioning manner.

"Well you certainly took your time" She said, glancing over the broken baguette. "What did you do to that bread?"

"Just had a few moments of introspection" he replied smiling, whilst expertly slicing an orange into segments with his newly acquired penknife. "It's hungry work."


	3. Chapter 3

You could set your clock by it, that's what they'd say. They were right. The captain had been sailing this route for the last 17 years and no matter what the weather or change in freight weight, the cargo ship would always arrive on time. This was something to be commended by anyone's standards but it was made even more impressive by the fact that this man could do this whilst having to load and unload at several ports along the Mediterranean coast.

Embarking from Santander, the ship usually made its way along the near coastal waters to reach Bordeaux before docking there for a day whilst it unloaded. The next point of interest came in the port near Nantes and then onwards to Quimper, Brest, Saint-Malo, repeating the same procedures as in Bordeaux before finally stopping at Portsmouth.

The journey in total lasted exactly 11 days.

264 hours.

As the boy who had just snuck into one of the freight containers was about to find out, 264 hours was plenty of time to lose your mind.

He had managed to get on to the boat whilst it had been offloading in Santander, using the cover of the early morning shadows to facilitate his covert run. The port was connected to the mainland by a small footbridge that ran over a river. The wind had knocked the bag that was too big for the boy into the river as he crossed it and the boy had to dive into the deep, slow moving water to retrieve it. The soaked ten year old had managed to make is way unhindered then on to the port; his only company the beads of water that dripped from his clothes and bag.

Removing the tool out of his bag and clasping it in both of his hands, he swung down and was able to break off the flimsy lock mechanism guarding the port's container storage unit using a screwdriver he had taken from the maintenance worker at the care home, not that that man would notice. By the time that anyone from that place would report him missing, it would already be too late to find him. He'd already have left for a far off land and would be untraceable.

In truth, the boy had no real plan as to what he was doing. All he knew was that he had to get away from this country – too many bad memories. Ever since his parents had died, he had gone through life rather robotically, eating only to stay alive and reading their books only to keep their memories intact. Though the more he tried to do this, the more he'd seem to forget about his parents and they would be replaced by a myriad of scientific words and recipes for foods he had never tasted but knew innately.

He couldn't even remember how his mother had died and each time that he tried in vain to cast his mind back to the most traumatising event of his short life, all he felt was this odd emptiness inside like a black hole. A darkness that seemed to suck in any and all matter inside him, leaving him more alone than he had ever felt before. That was the real reason why he was trying to leave Spain. If he could get out of the country, maybe, just maybe whatever had been plaguing him would be left behind too.

The container room was, unsurprisingly, filled with large ship freight containers. They were in many different colours and were lined in rows that stretched for what seemed like miles in the open ending building that used to be a ship repair yard. Every so often, there were men who had come in through the other entrance from the main dock area and a few of them were in the process of loading up smaller cargo onto forklifts to deposit inside the large metal freight containers which would then be hoisted by crane onto the ships that were docked at port.

He ran over to the wall dividing the closed end of the room with the open end and he looked up at the timetable. There were acronyms he couldn't decipher and words he didn't understand but he got the general gist of it. There was a cargo ship leaving for Portsmouth this morning and he had to be on it. There was a code next to that particular route had the code number GJ186 scrawled over it in felt pen.

He watched from his vantage point as the men loaded and unloaded cargo. Water still dripping from his bag and squelching in his shoes, he ran to the red containers after the men left the room. The crane was still removing containers and dropping them onto a nearby vessel which had the number GJ186 sprayed on its side. Opening the nearest container with the same code scribbled on it, the drenched boy looked inside. There were boxes stacked up to the ceiling against the walls and along the centre of the container, transecting it in the shape of a large letter H. There was a heavy metal cargo line that hung above the centre of the container which connected to the same mechanism the crane used to lift the cargo container.

He could sneak onto the boat in this box and then make his way onto the lower levels of the ship where there would be food and somewhere warm he could sleep. This plan was foiled when the metal door slammed shut as a port worker walked past. It was then that the boy realised that he was unable to open the door from the inside. He was thrown into the corner as the container was lifted and transported onto the ship. The bag cushioned the impact of it but his head still swam. His final thoughts before unconsciousness were the hopes that he was on right ship and in a container going to Portsmouth.

He was awoken as they arrived at Bordeaux by the noise of the freight containers around him being removed from this deck and transported to the mainland via a crane similar in sound to the one he had heard at the port he'd snuck aboard from. The removal of the container right next to his shone the light of the sun down upon him and highlighted the location of numerous holes in the side of the container which allowed the boy to peer outside and view the world that he had left behind for the duration of his journey. Going by the light and guesswork, the boy reckoned that it had been almost a day before the ship started again, the engines' low rumbles becoming deafening roars in his young ears.

No matter how hard he tried, any further sleep eluded him. He had had little to eat since the bread had gone prematurely mouldy and the other foods had either been destroyed or lost when he fell in the water. And then there was the smell. The bread combined with the degradation of some of the other perishable goods meant that the container was filled with a muggy smell. That smell was made worse even when one took into account the smell that came from the opposite corner of the container from the boy. He had needed to go to the toilet rather badly and didn't really have that many options.

Time passed.

It could have been hours, it could have been days.

They all felt the same to him.

The boy in the container was in the corner, propped up against the ridges the container provided, trying to get some sleep to alleviate the pain he had been feeling in his head. He had become rather ill, he was sure of that. Having travelled wet clothes probably didn't help but he had sorted that. In an attempt to find some food untainted by the decomposition that seemed to hang over the very journey he was taking, the young stowaway had found a chef's jacket. He wasn't really aware of whom it belonged to but that mattered not, only that it provided dry, warm covering.

So it was now that the boy clad in the large white garment rested, albeit fitfully, for the first time since he embarked. Externally, he would have appeared somewhat peaceful if it weren't for the constant clenching of his arm muscles when he drew himself in and out of the foetal position.

Internally, panic and rage and a twisting vortex of helplessness bubbled of from the depth of his core. A battle seemed to rage on between the bubbles of colour that populated his mind and a blackness that seemed to stick to him like tar. It came from a place he didn't know he had and in a flicker of lucidity, wasn't sure actually existed. It was so strong and so immediate; it defied all sense and logic. This blackness that was enveloping his mindscape was dangerous and yet he needed to go straight to it. He needed to touch it.

Externally, the heat was real and not just a jumble of now foreign emotions. From his restrained distance, he could feel his skin heat up. Sweat trickled down his neck and soaked his jacket, his skin stinging as if the tiny hairs themselves burning and yet he couldn't dispute his compelling need to touch the darkness that seemed to get hotter as he moved closer to it.

There was yelling. He, himself, was yelling. The words coming from his own mouth were incomprehensible either through the distance of dreaming or because he was incapable of coherent speech, but the raw and scratchy feel to his throat said he had begun screaming long before and would continue long after. It was nothing but noise, heat, and a useless struggle to go nowhere. Finally, the myriad of colours that seemed to have been dancing in his mind was gone, completely covered by the darkness. His body ached as he came back to the land of consciousness and he could feel numbness down his left arm.

It took nearly five minutes before his muscles started to un-tense. In that time, his sensory perceptions came back to him with such force that he was left dazed. It was an adrenaline rush, seemingly from nowhere, fuelled by that dream. For the first time, he could truly appreciate just how bleak his journey's shelter was. He could feel the lack of movement of the vessel, meaning that they'd come to another port. He could hear the sound of raised voices nearing his temporary home, see the flickers of flashlight through the hole in the container and there was no way he could ignore that smell emanating from the corner.

They had heard him. He was going to be found and sent back to Spain. He couldn't do that. He had survived this long and he had no intention of being carted right back into the care homes there. If he could just hide away, maybe they'd not notice him and perhaps he'd be able to sneak off of the ship in the middle of the night. Not that he was sure that it wasn't the middle of the night right now.

He drew himself up slowly, picking up his bag. It had become considerably lighter over the course of the journey and contained only books now. He was easily able to yank it from the floor and throw it in an arc so it landed atop the stack of boxes that lined the sides of the container. He looked up at his objective – the cargo line. Climbing to it was simple; the ridges in the container provided some footing for the boy to kick off and sloth grab the long metal wire that hung across the ceiling.

As he tried to grab the cargo line with his left hand, an indescribable pain shot up his wrist and he pulled his arm back reflexively. His other hand was hooked on the line; wrapping his body around it in an attempt to decrease his size was relatively easy. His logic was that the boxes stacked on the side would hide him from the workers that were now patrolling the boat if they were to come in. It didn't matter that he was barely above eye level or that an off white chef's jacket would be clearly discernable on a dark background or even that the heavy smell of waste would give him away. No, this was a well thought out plan according to the ten year old that had spent the last 11 days alone, sleep deprived and without a constant source of food.

His vision was the first to go as the adrenaline rush wore off. He couldn't see straight but could make out the shapes of the flashlight wielding people that were pointing at him. Their voices rang loud. Thousands of voices passed through his ears. No, that was an exaggeration. It was dozens of voices, but filtered through the mind of a boy who had gone without food, reverberated within the confines of his skull, and warped by his thoughts, the dozens became innumerable.

He could feel himself growing weak and was about to fall from the wire he had precariously clung to for the last few minutes. Luckily, a pair of hands plucked him from his domain and he found himself being flipped one hundred and eighty degrees, the world becoming the right way up again as he was being carried out of the container and off of the boat by the fluorescent jacket wearing man.

"_Why am I still alive?_" he questioned, projecting the thoughts weakly into the bleak expanse that was his being. It was stupid. He was talking to himself. Not even that. He was _thinking _to himself. It was moments like this that the boy questioned his sanity.

"_Because it would be no fun if you were dead._" His sanity answered back.

The smiled to himself weakly as he was placed into a police car.

He now had a friend.


	4. Chapter 4

The blinking LCD alarm clock on his bedside table beeped incessantly, alerting him to the fact that it was 6:30 am. Its positioning perfectly facilitated what followed next, which was a swift fist to mash the off button from the fully awake boy.

Huey hadn't slept. Not that that was anything new to him. Insomnia had often plagued him but it had never been so bad that he, at some point, couldn't simply will himself to engage REM sleep. A certain thought sequence had kept him from resting but he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was. Closing his eyes and trying to remember what had stopped his sleep was the closest thing the boy had gotten to resting.

Although now he was up and fully alert, a slight weariness was evident on his eyelids, tugging at his mind but refusing to silence the beat that pounded mercilessly through his psyche. Something was wrong. A memory chimed from a far corner of his brain, so far in the distance that he would have guessed it was from earliest childhood at first, but a moments' probing proved that notion incorrect. No, he was older than that.

For a moment, Huey struggled to grasp the context, the string of memory the scene pulled at. He dug for the mental roots of the connection, but again he came up only feeling stressed and tired. On one hand it seemed so unimportant. Everything before four years ago when he joined CHERUB lacked importance to him but on the other hand, he knew on an intellectual level he should feel something for it- anything at all.

He closed his eyes as the mental pounding worsened. It was insidious, the pain. It had started to creep up on him whilst he was searching for the slippery memory. It sparked in the middle of his skull, flickering like a near-extinguished match in the middle of a forest floor. The ache wouldn't stay so silent.

As Huey moved stiffly across the carpeted floor of his bedroom towards the bathroom across the corridor, his bare feet sinking into it slightly, he searched for the thread of some emotion that might link him to the impenetrable mental safe that contained his earliest memories but all he could find were still frames from the dreams he had been having, nothing of any substance and he could only regard the thoughts with a form of detached interest. It disturbed him. The more he probed his own mind, the more the tendrils of headache flared angrily before finally exploding with the force of nitro-glycerine.

He doubled over once he got into the cream tiled bathroom and his hands gripped the edge of the washbasin as the pain flooded his system. His knuckles were beginning to match the pale colour of the bathroom as he reflexively applied more force to it in an attempt to alleviate the pain coming from his head or at the very least, focus his mind on some other part of his body.

"Huey? Are you okay in there?" Gabriela had just woken up, that much was evident in her voice. Huey had to stifle the urge to scream as he pulled himself away from the sink and the comfort that throttling its marble edges had provided as he walked over to open the door. In double the time it would have usually taken for him to become composed, his mask came down once again.

"Oh don't worry." Huey replied softly as he leant against the doorframe with one hand propping him up, the other hand clenched behind his back. "Everything's fine."

He flashed a smile to reassure her.

She wasn't convinced.

"Why are you up so early? You don't have to leave for school for another-" She looked down the corridor to the clock positioned under the window. "-hour and a half."

Huey laughed. He hadn't intended to but laughter was often a response to extreme amounts of pain. He could feel the blood pooling in his palm and trickling through the gaps between his fingers.

"Well one must look their best when trying to chum up to the daughter of a member of a drug cartel's inner circle." He bit down lightly on his tongue to show that everything was okay. On the inside, he was exhibiting large amounts of self control not to bite it cleanly off.

"So you're definitely targeting Maya then?"

They had discussed, the previous evening, on how best to infiltrate the home of Manuel Estevado. Intelligence gathered in the days prior to their arrival had suggested that the son, Luis, was gay and given that he was the eldest child, it was put forward that he might be more knowledgeable about his father's "less than legitimate" work and would therefore prove a better asset to invest time into.

Huey had stated that he had no problem with pretending to be gay for the duration of the mission. Why should he? It was no different to what he did day in, day out. One mask switched for another, ultimately meaningless. However, he foresaw a problem that the "relationship" would cause when it came to the father.

Manuel probably had no clue about his son's sexual orientation and given that Colombian drug cartel members weren't exactly known for their acceptance and liberality, Huey decided to go down the path of least resistance and work his way in with the daughter, Maya.

"Yeah. I think that my chances of getting in with Estevado would be lessened somewhat if he found out that I'd turned his son into a homosexual." Huey replied. "They aren't particularly tolerant, those armed gangsters. Now if you don't mind..."

Gabriela smiled as he closed the door on her. He let out a sigh. It was far too difficult to keep himself composed during that conversation and it shouldn't have been. Huey didn't like being vulnerable. Unclenching his hand, he could see the four crescent moon shapes that had been cut into his palm, blood dribbling from each of them. Even in all of this, his heart beat accelerated any higher than the normal, repetitive thud that resonated in his ears.

He sighed and turned the hot water tap, the red label on the brass camouflaging the layer of blood he left. The sound of rushing water filled the bathroom. Water fell from the bath spout and pounded the pristine white tub. After a while, the running water took on a rhythm of its own, but he was certain it was only in his mind as the beat of the pouring water matched the beat of the throbbing just behind his eyes and in his left forearm and hip. It matched the beating of his heart. In the dark recesses of his mind, he wished it wasn't quite so slow. Even as he leaned down to plug up the drain, the tempo was steady. Maybe Basic Training at CHERUB had really done its job. After that, everything else seemed easy. Perhaps it was more than that. He needn't dwell on it. Not now. He had to focus.

As if having an out of body experience, he stripped naked, each layer of previously clean clothing thrown into a pile. Reddish streaks of half-dried blood marked them now. Huey stopped for a moment to stare at the clothing. The blood could've belonged to anyone but the sanguinary DNA was his. He didn't know why this affected him in such a way but it was another few seconds before he snapped out of it, his gaze wandering to the now full bath.

A sigh followed by a quick check of the water's temperature preceded him planting one foot and then the other, lowering himself into the once-clear liquid. Only submerged up to his waist, the water had turned a murky pink colour, partly due to the blood coming from his hand and partly due to the injury he had sustained on a UWTC exercise a few days before the mission. The single cut that ran down his left thigh was his reminder to push off from a wall the next time he chose to jump out of a window. Well, he was by no means the worst off from that particular exercise, injury wise but the now reopened leg wound still stung.

Until he began to settle into the body-saturating heat he wasn't aware of the soreness and stiffness in his muscles. It was deep but it would go. To himself he thought that by the time school began, it would reach a crescendo, the aching from dull to sharp and then by nightfall, it would disappear entirely.

Closing his eyes, he sank further into the rising water, resting the nape of his neck against the cold rim of the tub. It was a startling contrast, but refreshing just the same. The silence, only permeated by the now muted surge of water against water, went on for nearly forever before Huey extended a foot and pushed against the faucet dial, extinguishing the flow. Without the sound of the running water, the bathroom seemed somehow exponentially louder but it was the noise in his brain this time that was the culprit. Like Lady Macbeth, he was plagued by a bloodstain no amount of soap, white wine, or turpentine would remove. He'd already crossed the line though, and in crossing it he discovered the line barely existed in the first place. It was as visible as tissue paper and as fragile as well.

He'd be caught out saying that the stain lingered on his very soul. Impossible, though, for his soul was not present. It was dead, as dead as his family, as dead as his faith in those around him. It was memorialised solely on a typed page in the CHERUB personnel files clipped to a grainy passport picture. It was a face and a smile that no longer belonged to him. His soul was gone, taken away with a name that was once his and sent to the heavens in an accidental spark. His life was a story and was partly a lie, but so was everyone else's at CHERUB. Whether they knew it or not, no one was who they thought they were.

_"There is no such thing as innocence." _

It was a thought that rang in his head time and time again. Everyone was guilty for something. Huey was special, maybe, but he was not innocent.

Pushing up with his legs, he righted himself, sliding along the slick bathtub bottom. He reached out a hand and plucked the bar of soap from the dish, unwrapping it from its pristine packaging with soaked fingers. The sharp and jarring sting of soap against open, still-weeping wounds trapped his breath in his chest but it meant life. He scrubbed mercilessly at his body until his fingernails were again pristine and the edges of his cuts were pink and raw. The water, however, was clouded and tainted to opacity. He'd probably have to scrub it out. With great care, Huey climbed from the bathtub and patted himself dry with the towel that hung from the peg on the wall. After this was done, he rummaged around in the bathroom cabinet for a while, removing a bottle and a yellow tube. Inside the bottle was bleach, which he poured into the bath water a moment after pulling the plug, the happy duck logo on the bottle antonymous to Huey's stern face.

Inside the tube was superglue, which he squeezed onto his leg injury whilst holding the skin together. The alcohol in the glue burned for a moment, but it evaporated and dried fast. He always preferred glue. It was less painful and quicker than stitching and didn't require looping a thread through a tiny hole. It was to be used whenever possible. On a base level, Huey wished that the edges of his core could be so easily patched together- that the gap in his mind that served as a stinging reminder of what was missing could be just so easily closed.

"_Now's not the time to think of that."_

His hand shot out and he took a peek, twisting the tub faucet in order to rinse it out. The bone-deep ache that had enveloped both his mind and body was silenced.

It was 7:30 when he finally pulled himself out of his bedroom. Gabriela was already at the table, nibbling on a slice of toast that she held in her left hand as her right tied her hair up in a loose ponytail.

"Well don't you look nice." She said as she looked up from the stack of papers splayed on the kitchen table. She pinched his cheek affectionately with her non-toast filled hand. "Quite a handsome son I've got, eh?"

Huey didn't respond verbally to her physical contact, only smiling to her before cutting some fruit into a bowl.

"So." He said, his rate of chopping not decreasing even as he tore away his gaze to stare at Gabriela. "What will you be doing while I'm busting my hump at school?"

"Mmmph." She removed the toast from her mouth. "Sorry. I'll be liasing with the head of the taskforce going up against the cartel. The information that you'll hopefully be able to get will help them build up strong evidence against Calacito and then, all things going to plan, we'll be getting out of here and they'll be able to run a successful sting operation."

"Okay. If I do my job right, I won't be back until later tonight." He replied as he picked at the fruit in his bowl. "Here's hoping I won't get suspended on my first day.

"So long as you make good inroads with the Estevado children and don't do anyone any lasting damage, I don't think that it will matter too much whether you get suspended or not."

"Heard you loud and clear." Huey couldn't shake the feeling that Gabriela was more nervous about this than he was. He put it down to her being a relatively junior Mission Controller and thought nothing more of it. He stood from the chair and picked up his messenger bag. Slipping on his loafers at the door, he stepped outside into the dark January morning. "See you later, mother dearest."

Gabriela sighed. The toast wasn't enough for her and she opened the fridge, picking at her half eaten dinner from the evening before. Gabriela headed back toward the house's spare bedroom that would serve as a mission control hub, the plastic container containing her left over microwave meal squeaking irritatingly in her hand. At the moment, she felt as though it would be more appropriate to fill a cereal bowl with Ritalin and eat it with a spoon. Her nerves were aflame, and so was her stomach.

On CHERUB campus, there existed a computer accessible only by the chairman. It was on this computer that a file that contained some extremely sensitive data was stored; a list, maybe five or six names long. Huey's name was on there, just under Ramsay, Jack and above a Shepard, Philip. Many CHERUB agents were exceptional, there was no doubt about that but there were some for whom their exceptionality was rivalled only by their potential for "less than condonable" actions. In layman's terms, it was the agent watch list, the ones that CHERUB had to be careful with.

When an agent is requested for a mission, their name is cross-checked against this file. If it just so happens that a Mission Controller has chosen a watched agent for a mission, they are given the pleasure of being briefed by the Chairman and the agent's handler for the best part of an hour and then read each intricate part of the personnel file before they choose whether to keep that particular agent.

Having read his file, she felt sorrow for the boy when it came to the events leading up to his recruitment but this was transformed into something else when she went through the transcripts of his psychologist sessions. The boy seemed like a shell; intelligent, no doubt but ultimately someone going through the motions of life with no real goal. At the same time, he was destructive. Incredibly so.

The thing that had stuck in Gabriela's mind was the instructor's report from a recent UWTC exercise that Huey had participated in a week prior. On it, he had feigned weakness to lure members of the opposite team to his position in a solitary attic, filled the room with smoke from four grenades, and shimmied down from the window before unloading the contents of his rifle into the room. The opposing force hadn't expected the entrance to be booby-trapped to not open from the inside and were caught unawares as Huey had proceeded to decimate them, making special note to shoot the smoke grenades attached to their belts in an attempt to perpetuate the plumes of smoke filling the room. This also had the unfortunate effect of burning many members of the team, leaving them with injuries that had inundated the medical staff on campus.

Before Huey, Gabriela had never even heard of the watch list but after having gone through the arduous briefing process, reading his personnel file and meeting the boy, she could understand why it was so imperative that those on the list never learned of it, lest they joined forces with one another.

The idea that perhaps she was taking part in the use of someone who was being manipulated for use by the British Intelligence Service swam into her head. That struck her as odd. Every child recruited had a choice whether or not to join up so why should he be any different?

Maybe it was something to do with that watch list and the knowledge that CHERUB were using children to protect a society would never accept them but she had to remind herself it was a necessary evil. She had to trust CHERUB's judgement and had to trust Huey. She had placed her confidence in the wrong people before and she had suffered for it. She needn't think about it though, it was way back when she had been a cherub and the only thing that had mattered was getting one up on your mates' shirts.

She peered out of the bedroom window and watched Huey assimilate into the morning pedestrian traffic as he walked down to the corner where the street met the main road. She could only hope that her faith in him was well placed.

* * *

><p>Thoughts on the story so far?<p>

Praise, rage or critiques, all are welcome.


	5. Chapter 5

_To begin, I must state that Huey is a very unique and interesting patient. He is a child much unlike any I have ever come across before during my tenure at CHERUB. Though I have only met with the patient once, I have already learned a great deal from him. A mere thirteen years of age this boy is but after talking with him, I have discovered an extremely distorted world view that has certain impacts on a multitude of areas of his life. He has what appears to be an eidetic memory regarding the sciences; physiology in particular. _

_Despite this, he still has worldly knowledge and was able to lead the topic of conversation from the death of his mother to a discussion on French cookery and how my views on bouillabaisse were misinformed. This knowledge of gastronomy may be an extension of his eidetic memory due to his life before CHERUB but to what extent, I cannot say. However, this rules out my initial diagnosis regarding autism but there are definitely superiority complexes present. To what degree, I cannot speculate without further interaction. Possible post traumatic stress disorder regarding his early life. Or maybe multiple personality disorder. Or even paranoid schizophrenia. At this stage, it is too early to tell. One thing is for certain though: Huey Newton is an enigma._

_-Transcript of Post-Session Remarks #311. Dr - (#WL4)_

"_Well, this looks...promising."_

The only word Huey could conjure to describe Stoke Newington School of Media Arts & Science was, well, shit. This wasn't in anyway indicative of a lack of any idiomatic knowledge on his part but was rather far more demonstrative of the inability of the English language to express the ineptitude of this place. It wasn't that the infrastructure was bad, far from it as the school had recently received a massive investment from the government to improve itself, a fact that was displayed on the school sign as Huey entered in an attempt to entice more parents to send their children there (albeit written in a far more captivating manner).

No, it was more due to the feeling of disinterest that everyone seemed to radiate. From students wishing they were still back on Christmas holidays to staff that were counting down the days until half term, nobody really wanted to be there.

"_And here's me looking forward to an interesting first day."_

"_Well, then you've got to make it interesting. As interesting as it can be without jeopardising your objective."_

"_Naturally."_

Try as he might, not even Huey's logically chaotic mind could make the first two lessons exciting. He had already completed his GCSEs in Maths and Physics so for the better part of two hours, Huey was assessing the dynamics of the classroom from a shadowed corner. It was like any area populated by hormonal teenagers. Some were introverts, some were extroverts. Some cared about learning, some did not. Some were heterosexual, some were bisexual and some were homosexual, although some were much better at hiding their infatuation than others. This was evident from the 'eyes' that Huey found himself being shot from two girls and one boy.

Letting himself lean back on the chair, Huey's mind began to wander to his journey to school earlier that morning.

The morning chill was hanging heavily in the air by the time he had left and Canonbury's pavements and roads had been quickly filling up with traffic. Most of the people out were commuters heading further into London for work but there were pockets of children. They were easy enough to spot as they were travelling in small packs to pierce the hustle of pedestrian traffic aid navigation through the city's busy streets.

Huey had weaved expertly through the crowd, eyes glancing left and right as he crossed two main roads in tandem, not once stopping. He had memorised the route in the car ride from campus whilst preparing for the mission and hadn't really been paying attention, just letting his training take over as he cut through the crowds. It was in this moment that he had caught his first glimpse of one of the Estevado children.

She was, for lack of better terminology, stunning. She had deep brown hair that fell over her shoulders in waves and bounced with each step she took, framing an deep brown face that was unmarred by spots. Huey slowed down, switching his body into manual mode, to briefly watch her. She walked with the confidence of someone that felt comfortable in their own skin- not very common to most of in Year 11. For the life of him, Huey couldn't fathom why the girl didn't have an entourage of mindless groupies following her around on her way to school.

His question was answered within the first few minutes of the Maths lesson – she was a genius. Needless to say, that required some qualifiers. She was a genius _relative _to the rest of the class. Huey hadn't done the subject further than GCSE level and so even he was lost when she started talking about some extremely higher grade mathematics. Even during Physics, a subject which Huey had a good mind for, she managed to keep him guessing. It could have simply been down to her reading A-Level textbooks but he had an opportunity to accurately gauge her intelligence during the lunch break.

Stepping out into the playground after making a diversion to make use of the facilities, Huey spotted her sitting alone in front of a chess board as numerous groups of teenagers travelled around her, all seemingly avoiding her orbit. Her hand was poised over a black knight when Huey chose to sit opposite her and she seemed pleasantly surprised.

"You're new here, aren't you? Huberto, right?" She asked, hands falling back into her lap.

"Huey, if you don't mind. Yes, I moved here from Brighton." Huey responded. He adeptly moved the chess pieces back into their starting positions.

"Sounds nice. Much better than the grim grey of London." She looked at his resetting of the board. "Oh, so you know how to play chess then I take it?"

"I dabble." He replied, briefly smiling. "Would I be intruding if I were to ask for a match?"

"No more so than you already have." she smiled back in kind. She rarely had anyone challenging to play chess against and she cracked her knuckles in a most unladylike manner, relishing the opportunity to overcome a new opponent.

The game began with Huey moving his white piece first. He opened with a standard play; moving one of the pawns forward. Maya replied in kind, blocking him off with her black pawn.

For a chess match, the game progressed at an incredibly rapid pace. Every few moves, Maya would unleash a devastating attack, forcing Huey to adjust his plan of action and move accordingly. She would then take his piece with a smug smirk. While she basked in temporary glory, Huey would cunningly riposte and take one of Maya's pieces in revenge.

The game progressed further into the lunch hour as more and more pieces fell. The not so many spectators (of which Huey's three fans comprised the majority) became even fewer as some people realised that they were, in fact, watching a chess match and there was food to be eaten. Huey and Maya carried on regardless, as their pieces fell one by one. It was a duel between minds of equal calibre and cunning, neither showing any signs of weakness.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Huey took Maya's queen: the chess equivalent of losing her leg. Maya's eyes darted frantically around the board. There weren't many pieces, of either colour left now, and she had left her queen horribly exposed. Then she noticed something Huey had missed. She grinned coyly. She reached her tanned hand over to his side of the board and took Huey' queen- with a pawn!

Partially demoralised by their losses, both of the players fought on in an aggressive silence. They lost piece after piece after piece. This had long descended from a game of wits to one of stubborn pride. Eventually, only two pieces were erect on the black and white board: Huey's king and Maya's king!

It was Huey's move. He hadn't expecting this standard of play from his target. He took a gamble. If he beat her, Maya could be sore at losing and might see him as a rival, severely limiting his chances of getting in with her for the mission. If he resigned, the opposite could occur with her not seeing him as adequate. Huey made his choice.

On its own, the king was practically useless. It wouldn't be wise to move his king into the proximity of the other king, but on the other hand, it was his only piece left. There weren't many options open to him.

Except one. One any professional chess player would never want to make. It was almost suicidal. No, it was suicidal! Huey moved his king right next to the other king. Only one space separated them. Maya sighed, almost bitterly, as she saw the plan. Whoever moved their king would lose the match and it would have to be her.

Resignedly, Maya placed a hand on her king. Losing was a very sorry thing for her. It was for Huey too but that happening unplanned was a rarity. Just as Maya lowered her piece in a sign of defeat, Huey quickly shot out his hand and lowered his king as well. The pieces fell to the board at the same time.

"Wow." Huey chuckled, downplaying his skill. "You certainly are skilled at chess."

"I could say the same for you, Huey." Her eyes scanned the boy facing her. "I'm never beaten. Never."

"It was a draw." He replied, standing slowly as the bell signalling the end of lunch rang. "You almost beat me. "

"There'll be no almost about it next time." Her voice was still of that sweet tone but had a steeliness underneath.

"So, which lesson do you have next?" Huey asked as they walked towards the main school building. He removed the crumpled time table from his jacket pocket. He made some attempt to decipher the blotted ink on the crumpled page. "I've got Technology in K2."

"Food Tech. You're a lucky one." She said, the sarcastic overtone unmistakable. "I switched out of that class this morning for Art instead."

"Lucky me indeed." Huey chortled uncharacteristically. "Beating you at chess has left me hungry."

Unlike the previous two lessons, Huey found this room to be much more to his imagination of what a good classroom should be. 8 workstations populated by three students each were spread out in two rows of four, flanked each side by cupboards containing ingredients and utensils. It was obvious where the majority of the money had been invested by the school but Huey wasn't complaining at all.

Cooking was one of Huey's guilty pleasures. Nobody on campus knew this fact, not even the staff. On the contrary, he had spent many hours of 'punishment' having to help out in the canteen kitchen. It was one of his preferred forms of chastisement but he couldn't let them know that, lest they make him help out with the red shirts again.

Huey had slipped into a workstation as he fondly replayed the memory of the last Halloween. Causing that red-shirt handler to visibly eject his bowels had been worth the two hundred hours of canteen duty. That particular memory was shaken from his mind by a far greater realisation.

"_No, it couldn't be."_

It was. He'd know that wispy facial hair anywhere. Slap bang in the middle of the classroom were his friends from the night before: Id, Ego and Super-Ego. All three of them sported bruises and grazes on their visible skin from the night before. It seems that that was the only reminder they had of the fight as they didn't visibly express any kind of distress when Huey entered the class. They simply continued to play around with the gas cooking range at their workstation, oblivious to him.

"Max, James and Craig! You've been excluded from the other elective classes and you're going the right way to get excluded from this one. Stop playing with the gas! You could cause it to explode!" The beleaguered teacher screamed at the three boys who were oblivious to the danger. The boys did as they were told and the rest of the class similarly fell quiet.

The teacher used the lull to go through the register, stopping first at Maya's name – only to be told that she had swapped the class for another, eliciting a snort from the petite female. She stopped again a moment later to repeatedly butcher Huey's name, _obviously_ having difficulty pronouncing the difficult 'ber' sound and single-handedly setting multiculturalism in inner city London back fifty years.

Fourty five minutes into the lesson and Huey was finishing whilst some were barely getting started. Huey had just removed a flourless chocolate cake from the oven and was slowly completing a crème anglaise. Huey had found that he had insufficient flour to complete the task as set on the sheet –chocolate brownies- so he ignored it and used the rest of the ingredients to make his own dessert, leaving the small pile of measly flour on the worktop like a small snowdrift. The class, mostly girls, had begun whispering about him the moment him that he had begun to substitute milk for heavy cream. The teacher didn't seem to mind or she simply didn't notice, choosing instead to slip out of the classroom with a chirp that she would be back in two minutes and that anyone acting up would be severely disciplined.

"Huberto? What kind of name is that?" the-boy-he-knew-as-Id-but-would-now-have-to-call-Max asked as soon as the staff member was clear of the door, oblivious to whom he was speaking to. His two sidekicks Ego/James and Super-Ego/Craig moved closer to Huey, intent on intimidating the new boy. "

"You're gay aren't you?" Max poked his stubby finger into Huey's chest as he invaded the boy's personal space for the second time in less than twenty four hours. Huey ignored him. He couldn't believe that this guy didn't remember him from the night before. Well, Huey supposed that it could be put down to extreme trauma suffered due to that tryst.

"No, I'm not but thanks for the interest." Huey retorted as he stirred the vanilla cream on the gas ring. "How long have you known you were gay?"

Huey's flagrant display of disregard to Max's position in the social hierarchy of the class only added to the insult of his comeback. The boy slowly turned red as he tried to sputter a response. Huey cut him off.

"No no, I understand. That's a really personal question. That information is between you and your Internet Service Provider but tell me-" he continued whisking as the words continued to flow from him. "-have you ever taken a big stick of bread in your mouth down a back alley?"

"_Ooh, a triple entendre. That's a rarity." _Huey smirked at the bowl of stiff egg. The class rippled with that clichéd '_ooh_' sound as they encircled the four.

Max took these words at face value. The new kid had come in here, had gotten all cakey and then had the nerve to call _him_ a homo. He couldn't stand for that. A momentary sense of déjà vu flashed by the boy as he swung his fist at Huey but that was fleeting as were all further feelings, both physical and emotional.

"_They still don't remember me." _

"_You're just going to have to refresh their memories."_

Huey had anticipated the fist and watched it come towards him, almost as if in slow motion. Huey briefly considered snapping the boy's wrist, an action quite easy to pull off from this position but it would probably require the use of both his hands and he really didn't want to leave the vanilla cream on the fire, lest it. Besides, snapping a wrist was a bit too extreme for this situation.

Pan handle resting in his stronger right hand, Huey pushed off of the workstation as Max's arm punched a hole in the space that his head had occupied. Left hand shooting forward like a snake, Huey grabbed the boy by his tie. Max, like many other his age, felt it uncool to tie his tie in a proper manner, choosing to leave a large knot just below his undone top button. It would be his undoing. Huey yanked the boy down by the fabric that his fingers had grasped and the poor lad had the unfortunate luck of having his forehead slammed rather brutally into the bar of the workstation before flopping unconsciously to the floor.

When sprayed through an intense heat source, flour can produce a ball of flame up to 6 feet high. It is a property that very few are aware of and that even fewer utilise, especially not during a fight. Huey (being Huey) was a member of the latter group. He used the moment of confusion that Max's thud to the floor had provided to lean forward, grab and hurl the clump of flour on the worktop towards the still flaming gas hob like one would throw a pair of die on a casino table.

The pitiful pile of flour had given rise to an eruption of flame that wasn't as powerful as a small melodramatic part of his personality would have liked but it was still enough to keep the other two boys away from him. The tendrils of plasma licked at their forms and the pair threw themselves backwards as if they were spooked horses shying away from an attacker and straight into the mops stacked up against the cupboard on the far wall.

An eerie silence hung over the classroom. This fight had ended within twenty seconds of it beginning and the winner hadn't been the expected person. The Food Technology class were stunned and nobody made a move to break the ever thickening tension that had formed like the skin on Huey's crème anglaise. The teacher had returned just in time to see the ball of flame from the outside corridor through the window in the door. Huey had finished crafting his masterpiece and spooned his dessert into his waiting mouth as she roared her displeasure at the ones she assumed to be responsible.

"YOU THREE! WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT PISSING ABOUT WITH THE EQUIPMENT?"

Currently Huey was sat in front of the TV, schoolbag flung in the corner with the homework from the day inside. BBC News played on mute, the breaking news a silent film that flickered colours into the darkened room. Huey was deep in concentration, reviewing the day's events in his mind. "I was sure that you said that you'd be back much later than this." Gabriela said as she descended the stairs and poked her head into the dreary space Huey chose to contemplate in. She grinned that large warm smile that did nothing for Huey. "What happened, Romeo? Did you fall at the first hurdle?"

He didn't respond straight away. It was odd. The hours between the Food Technology class and the school day coming to a close had seen the collective life-force of the school being rejuvenated as the rumour mill run rampant.

Maya had been in his final two classes of the day and he had spent the best part of those lessons and the walk home from school quashing the story Maya had been told by one particularly hysterical Year 8 girl that Huey had beaten up Max Carroway, James Marks and Craig Daniels after the three had attacked him with deodorant flamethrowers. He had assured Maya that nothing of the sort happened and just agreed with the more widely believed story that one boy had tripped and the others were sent flying by their own disregard for gas safety. It was obvious that she didn't believe him for one minute but the brown haired girl with the twinkling eyes let it slide, smiling in a knowing manner.

Huey had expected her to invite him round to her place where he would have been able to plant the bugs and maybe get a quick peek at some documents. So it came as a great shock to the teen agent when the girl that he had been chatting to with such interest simply bid him goodbye as soon as it came to the fork that separated their two roads. Such was the incredulity of the moment that Huey had stood there for at least ten seconds, head hanging to one side in a comical manner, jaw wide open.

To a passing observer, it would seem as though he were a boy infatuated with the figure with the retreating figure but he was far more confused than a love struck schoolboy. In all of his past missions, it had been that simple. Get in a fight with the bully (or take part in the bullying, if it required it), interact with the target to the point of apparent personal connection and then carry out objective. Thirty go to ten.

Always.

Foolproof.

"Maya's a bit trickier than your run of the mill cartel member's daughter but don't worry. I'm confident that I'll be to get in to that house to plant bugs and copy the documents before the month is up." Huey replied, words obfuscated slightly by the water. He felt no need to be modest. He was a skilled agent. He knew it and so did she so there was no need to beat around the bush. "I'll be in and out. No trace."

"_There's a Catholicism joke in there, somewhere."_

"_Don't make a 'pull out method' joke. It's crude"_

"Crudity_ is a given for a teenage boy, no?"_

He didn't make the joke but internally smiled, the humour lightening his mood slightly. Gabriela withdrew her head and retreated back up the steps to the makeshift office to finish an email to the police liaison, leaving Huey to relax once more with the glass of water and the silent box.

He shot his school bag a look of contempt. He wasn't going to waste his time with that homework. He wouldn't be sticking around long enough for it to matter. He had made good progress with Maya today and he was certain that it wouldn't take more than a couple of weeks to get the job done.

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	6. Chapter 6

**September 21, 2004 **

**3:00 AM**

**Amazon Jungle**

What would you do if you were informed that you only had five minutes to live?

It is rather an interesting question to ask another person, is it not? If a survey were conducted and one hundred people were asked that very question, they all would surely give a wide variety of answers. A very probable common answer would be something along the lines of: 'surround myself with loved ones, family and friends so that a final goodbye can be said'. As answers go, that seems pretty nice, no?

But what if you had no loved ones? What if your father had been murdered by a gang of "freedom fighters"? What if that had caused your mother's death? What if you had no extended family and were left in the care of the state? What if you were bounced around innumerable care homes, most of which uncaring of whether you lived or died? In fact, they might have preferred that you died. Would have saved them a lot of paperwork.

Would that bother you?

Perhaps?

Perhaps not?

So, clearly, familial longing is out of the question, so let's move onto loved ones. When you consider that you yourself are only ten, there hasn't really been a whole lot of time for you to accumulate a number of 'loved ones' outside of your, now deceased, family. It doesn't help that you've never really felt attached to anyone.

Well, that's not strictly true.

You can't forget about _him_.

It's a he. It has to be a he. You're a he and it is you, therefore it must be a he. Though, it's not as simple as that, is it? Well, nothing in your life really is. Unless you call one hundred days of training to turn you into a spy _normal. _Even so, you're still the weirdest of the ten year olds currently trekking through the Amazon jungle on the final day of what has been the most exciting three months of your life. Weird? Is that the right word? Special might be a better fit. Still not precise enough. Unique?

Yes.

You're _unique_.

There's probably no-one else like you at CHERUB and if there is, you haven't encountered them yet. Is that necessarily a bad thing though, all things considered? That would make for such a _fun _time, now wouldn't it? Someone would probably end up dead. You wouldn't really be bothered and _he _wouldn't care less. Good thing you are the one in control.

You are not Huey Newton.

You are Huey.

_He _isNewton.

Like two halves of a whole, you come together to form the entity.

The yin and the yang.

The black and the white.

No, that's stupid.

It's better thought of as an Easter egg.

You are the chocolate.

_He _is the emptiness.

If you weren't around then _he _would be nothing interesting, just a vacuous space of no real substance or appeal. If _he _weren't around, you'd be a ball of...chocolate?

Any analogy becomes useless when taken too far.

You only really began to notice him when you were stowed away on that boat from Spain. You always were an oddly quiet child. Your parents didn't care. They were too busy with their jobs but you were always different from the other kids in the area. Always so morally lackadaisical yet never caught of anything. That behaviour had to change. Since your mother died and you stowed away to England, you've learnt that the quickest way to get caught out is to be different. That's why you repressed that side of you, put the mask on to maintain the façade of a semblance of humanity.

He's you, the true you.

Compartmentalised.

Hidden behind the mask; yet he always finds a way to speak to you.

Where you would take no notice, _he _would. Where you would attack to incapacitate, _he _would kill. Where you would kill, _he _would...well...you don't know. _You've_ never really felt the urge to kill.

Though there was that one boy at the care home.

You merely wanted him to stop bothering you whilst you read. It was merely an unfortunate coincidence that you, as a ten year old, were reading up on the cardiovascular system. Again, a coincidence that you just happened to have a bandaged arm.

Well that's not strictly true, either. Your antics on that cargo ship caused some pretty bad damage to your left arm. No wonder you got picked on in the care home. You never went outside and were silent all the time. People don't like silent. It's scary for someone to be silent. Remember that. Fit in and you won't get caught out and seen for just how different you are.

Though you did manage to conform to the behaviour patterns of a bullied child that'd been ripped from his parents and home. You fought back using the only thing you had. The gauze that was protecting your damaged wrist.

It was, however, completely by chance that the, poorly named, safety pin holding the gauze together just happened to be rusty. Oh well. It was nothing a few tetanus jabs couldn't deal with.

That was a turning point for two reasons.

Previous to that day, you had been trying to compromise with _him._ With his words to kill. You took control and merely wounded.

Yes, okay. It doesn't sound like much but for you, it was a damn near miracle.

The second good thing to come of it was you getting drugged and kidnapped by the government.

Yeah, the care home was _that_ bad.

You can't really remember your mother's death too well but you can remember your father's. How you felt when they told you what happened.

How he wasn't coming back from work.

How those books were the last things you had to remember him by.

That's just it. You _remember _the feelings. You don't actually feel them.

Hollow.

Echoes in the wind, offering a glancing touch never to return.

That's how you go through day to day. Putting on the show that you really do feel things to the extremes that others do, when in fact you do not. That's not to say that you don't feel emotion because you do.

Just less deeply and permanently.

Which, all things considered, gives you a certain advantage on this training programme. You've exhibited an abject lack of care for the safety of yourself and others, which would have gotten you kicked out of Basic Training and CHERUB if it weren't for the fact that you seem to be the most skilled agent of the last five years. You don't know that, of course but it wouldn't surprise you one bit.

The others are all weak and treat this like it's the be-all and end-all of their lives. You treat it as a game. It's certainly the most exciting thing to happen to you and that's all you want really. Some _excitement. _Something to alleviate the boredom. Something to avoid the emptiness of Newton taking hold, demanding to be satiated by something sadistic.

Sorry, this has digressed somewhat.

_Friends!_

You don't even have a Basic Training partner anymore because you thought he slowed you down too much during the exercises and couldn't take a punch.

To the throat.

Mere coincidence that the two boys whose snores vied for dominance for the first thirty nights both both woke up one morning with the female training instructor's underwear drawer strewed all over their beds with 'questionable stains' on them.

Also a coincidence that one of them was your partner.

Well, _former _partner. 12 hours of endurance training had made both of those boys quit. Funnily enough it wasn't even about the snoring. By then, you had already trained your body to go into REM sleep on command. No, it was out of principle. Plus a little boredom.

That's how you, as a ten year old boy, deal with the _friendly_ people in your life. It's honestly no surprise that your friend count is a firm zero.

To add to zero family and zero loved ones.

So, you've got no-one of importance in your life that you could say goodbye to when the short amount of time you've got left ran out.

Lucky thing you aren't the one with only five minutes left to live then, isn't it?

The hysterical black haired girl paddling wildly against the Amazon current in a broken motorboat who hasn't yet realised her resistance to the elements is futile?

Not so lucky.

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	7. Chapter 7

It's a Saturday, but the rain was Sunday rain. Huey ambled down the street, dry, sheltered by the tint of a dark blue umbrella; the shade of it matching the navy CHERUB shirt he had been wearing on campus for a year. The few that continued around him went about their lives, unable to understand why it is they lived, and failed to find any true meaning in what they did. It was a meaningless world for them but simple commodities were able to keep them occupied enough not to realize this. It being Oxford Street, London's biggest high street, there were many of them. They were hopeless, blundering things and it was for this reason which Huey loved to watch them.

There being no school on Saturdays, Huey had fallen into the routine of exercising and reading up on the Cartel. He wasn't really a fan of rainy days, not normally, but today an exception was made.

What led to this, you ask?

One could say the internet - a seamless, limitless medium communicating the ideas of all sorts of faceless people. Huey had realised after a while that Maya wasn't going to be inviting him round any time soon so he moved onto Plan B. A memory stick with a hidden VNC installer, allowing Huey free access to monitor and control the computer it was plugged into. From there, he could access the other computers, assuming that they were all connected to the same network. It seemed, however, that the universe was once again against Huey. If there was a computer that contained all the data for the Calacito Cartel in Estevado's house, it certainly wasn't connected to the internet.

So that ruled out the easy option. Oddly enough, Huey found himself more and more drawn to monitoring Maya's computer usage. He justified it as "research into her behavioural patterns in order to aid integration into her day to day life" whenever Gabriela took the time out from writing emails to police liaisons and government departments in order to supervise him. For the most part, he was flying solo on this mission. Gabriela was there only because a fifteen year old boy would look odd living in an area like this on his own. She also made good tea. Huey noted that as he leant over the computer for the umpteenth time that morning, watching the keystrokes unfold on the computer two roads over.

What he had noted from these sessions was that Maya had a fascination with poetry; spending hours on online amateur poetry and fiction sites. Huey couldn't really complain much for he too had an interest in poetry. He found that there was something attractive about the way the words bring feeling to a subject, how emotions are easily manipulated by carefully picked and placed words. Love, sadness, anger and hate - mostly anger and hate - course through the lines and into the veins. To him, it was nigh on manipulative magic.

On the internet, Maya (and by espionage extension, Huey) had witnessed countless of faceless things carve out their angst ridden hearts and smear them, black and red, in fiction and poetry sites to satisfy their need for self expression. They felt alone, like the world was against them and everything in their lives has been hard and cruel and unbearable. The one relief they seemed to draw from their pain was to let the world feel it - to shovel it off to other anonymous beings who they hope will understand or at the very least, accept them. And if not, then they become the enemy, they become the new punching bag who doesn't understand, wants to control their lives, expects too much from them, has it too easy and then, _surprisingly_, didn't understand.

How sad.

After reading one too many of such poems, Maya thankfully decided to alleviate Huey's pain by switching from the irritating websites to a decidedly more teenage girl activity. Shopping for handbags. For a mere moment, Huey had actually entertained the delusion that the mission was about to get a bit easier for him but that had been quickly quashed when the mouse on Maya's screen moved to compare five bags of the same make.

Silly Huey.

The next half an hour went on for hours, with Huey practically screaming at the laptop monitor like one would in the cinema at the hapless characters in a horror film, offering life saving advice, often in vain.

"JUST BUY THE RED BAG!" The teacup was knocked away but didn't tip over onto the table the laptop was perched on. "IT'S CHEAPER AND REAL LEATHER!"

As if by magic, the bag was purchased and Huey's torture was ended with the transfer of £200. Unfortunately for Maya, there was no delivery on this item and the website pleasantly informed her that she would have to pick it up from the store.

So that's what decided that it was time for Huey to venture outside into the drizzly morning armed with nothing but his pleasant personality and favourite umbrella. He had tracked Maya from Islington to Oxford Circus on the underground system, braving the tube system that was characteristically packed. A few hours had been spent following the girl as she picked up the purchased bag and some other items before continuing in some clothes shops.

Huey had been in a pensive mood for most of the time he had been tracking her. His thoughts went back to the endless slew of poems that Maya seemed to engrossed by. Huey thought it a pity that some people couldn't seem to write about the good things in life - like explosives and coma-induced muscular atrophy, or ice cream.

From the way they complained about their lives, it appeared that they were being crushed by the weight of the world when the truth is, they didn't know enough about the world to be complaining about it. So convinced about their pain that it had blinded them. Even though he felt irked and internally complained about this aspect of humanity, Huey knew that for his sake, it must exist. Without it, there would be less for him to work with. Less for him to blend in with.

The drizzly London day was full of melancholy, with people moving sluggishly to their destinations, not wanting to commit to their tasks wholeheartedly. Huey found them interesting to watch because he knew that one day, they would all be his. Be it by heart or mind. Huey held the belief that people who were not focused were a waste of air and space. Without such people, there would be no queues in the canteen at that terrible school, no people to religiously waste their money on the lottery and no one to overcrowd the bus. It would be an easy life where solid people could pursue their leisure without petty hindrances - acquaintances who can't deal with the pressure. There would be significantly few people walking these streets today. There would be significantly less people to have fun with.

Huey closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, the cold smell of April showers shaking him from the automatic tracking mode that he'd been in as he tailed Maya.

_Maya?_

He'd lost her. She had just been there, a few metres in front of him, standing in the doorway of an upmarket clothes shop. Huey moved more forcefully through the crowd, his umbrella carving a path through the throng of people. Finally he moved to the end of the pavement before it curved off unto another main road, right outside Hyde Park Corner Station. Standing on the tip of his toes, he scanned the crowd

The rain hadn't deterred some tourists, who were taking pictures in the renowned park on the opposite side of the road. A young boy was being disciplined by his mother in the entrance of the Tesco and he was replying with a tantrum.

_There!_

Huey recognised the shopping bags dangling from her arm as he'd seen her accumulate them over the last few hours. She had moved to the other side of the road to examine some more clothing options and was now walking back to where the underground station and Huey were, oblivious to the speeding car, whose driver was talking enthusiastically on her mobile phone.

Maya would not notice the car in time, despite the fact that it was a bright, shining shade of yellow. A boy shouted at her from his safe haven of the pavement, gesturing madly with one arm as the other rested upon the yellow pedestrian traffic light button box; but it was too late for him to do anything about it. Especially if all he was going to do was try to pull her back like a mime with an imaginary rope.

Maya kept on walking, blissfully unaware to her surroundings thanks to to white earbuds firmly entrenched in her auditory canals. She continued to walk towards Huey, strutting in that confident Maya way to her inevitable death. From where he stood, he could easily reach the girl, pull her to safety, but saving people is not what one would do on instinct! No, the decision to prolong the girl's life required a little bit of thought on Huey's part.

"_Car's going what, forty? Maybe forty five?"_ Split second calculations of biophysics were done. The thoughts were transmitted into the darkness with full knowledge that his emptiness would respond. "_Skull fracture at best, death at worst."_

"_Letting her die is an option. Funerals mean openings at the house for a reception. You've not got into that house for three months."_

It was true. Maya had been stonewalling him on every conceivable opening to get into her house. He and Gabriela had talked about it after the first month and had concluded that they'd be unable to employ incapacitating agents; Luis and the mother were both asthmatic. There was no way they'd be able to safely use it.

Huey couldn't explain it. He'd been nursing the feeling that if it were any other agent, they'd have been pulled back to campus by now. That he was being isolated on purpose. Now wasn't the time to dwell on it. A girl was about to get hit by a Ford Fiesta. A _yellow_ Ford Fiesta. He needed to make a decision now.

"_Funerals are a one time only opportunity. I need recurrent access to the house and Estevado."_

She couldn't even notice a bright yellow automobile careering towards her; was such a person worth Huey getting wet? Lucky for her, he had decided that Maya would have have her uses alive, in spite of her obviously poor peripheral vision.

Covering two and a half metres in the blink of an eye, he was beside the girl, pulling him off the road, falling onto the grass verge that banked on the edge of the road where the pavement met the park. It was truly an exciting moment. She fell on top of Huey, and he could only watch helplessly as his navy blue umbrella tumbled onto the road and was crushed ignobly by the yellow, sunflower-esque monster.

The carnage was horrible, and Huey couldn't help but let his irritation be shown on his face. Fifty meters later, the sound of the beast swerving to a halt could be heard but to Huey, everything seemed so distant. He had bought that umbrella himself, damn it. The dazed girl lay stunned on top of him, the thought that she might have been seriously injured was probably running through her mind, that's if her mind was working at all. If it wasn't then that was one very nice umbrella sacrificed for nothing.

The driver ran towards the pair, waving her hands wildly and obviously spooked. She looked terrified and guilty, but try as he might, Huey could not conjure up a single drop of sympathy for her. He had bought that umbrella with his own money. It was wind resistant. WIND RESISTANT!

"Oh my God! Oh my God! Are you okay?" she kept screaming at the the pair lying on the verge.

At this time, Maya removed herself from atop Huey with a blush and dusted herself off, freeing Huey to rescue his already broken umbrella from being run over once more. The handle was broken, the shaft jutted out like a splintered bone and the water-resistant cloth had been torn from it's structure. The thing was beyond salvageable. A mere husk bearing a semblance to what it once was. How fitting. Though he could hear Maya and the woman talking behind him, he had no interest in their conversation. Listening probably would have helped explain why after a moment, the woman shoved a fifty pound note into my hand and hurried off back to her 1.4 litre engined destroyer.

Fifty quid. As if that was going to fix anything, the dumb bitch.

Huey turned to face her, composed. As composed as a boy with a flattened umbrella could be.

"Didn't anyone tell you how to look left and right?" He said evenly.

"Thanks for, you know, saving my life," Maya rubbed he arm after she gathered the bags off of the grassy floor.

"You're welcome as long as I don't have to do it again," Huey said. The girl knew gratitude, a useful emotion."Has losing to me at chess for the last few months really driven you to suicide?"

"You mustn't be paying attention when we play, Huey. I've beaten you countless times!" She put on a laugh as she tried to walk away but had to settle for an amble, a slight limp showing. Huey quickly intercepted her fall with his firm grip.

"Honestly, I'm shocked by the revelation! Maya, I understand that I'm quite a handsome guy but I'm sure there are much less _suicidal _ways of grabbing my attention." Huey smirked at her, enjoying the back and forth. His arms were propping her up, helping her to walk. "Come on. How about we get you back home so you can rest?"

"That would be nice," she replied as she began to blush, the redness only serving to darken her cheeks.

"_Excellent_", he smiled."_Things are going as planned"_.

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><p><strong>Note: Finally! Huey's progressing after three months!<br>**

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	8. Chapter 8

Huey woke from his sleep. It had been a light sleep, as fitful and restless as always. Annoyingly, his more pleasant dream recounting the misfortune suffered by another cherub on Basic Training had been replaced by something far less appealing. The voice telling him to 'look at them'. Look at what? He couldn't remember the dream to recollect that detail in any way. It irked him.

He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, fingers instigating the transition from the dream world to the real. He blinked, not recognising the ceiling above him. His head darted around but he didn't recognise the bed he lay in or the room which stretched out beyond it. The only things he had seen before were his clothes which, as of now, were like the lights on the edge of a runway forming a rough path to the door from the bed.

As the rest of his mind booted up, more recent memory returned to him. He remembered, with a Cheshire grin, the events leading up to this point. He had accompanied Maya home, where she had proceeded to babble about 'having had her life saved' and 'there being no adequate recompense'. Huey hadn't really been paying full attention to the girl as she continued; he was far more focused on the potential vantage points he could bug the house from. His train of thought had been cut off by the girl latching onto his face rather forcefully and Huey, ever the gentleman, returned the favour in kind.

And so here he was.

It was Maya's ceiling, and Maya's bed, and Maya's room, Maya's shopping bags huddled in the corner, and – he threw back the bed sheet in order to dispel any notions of Schrodinger's blanket – Maya herself, sleeping naked against his frame, one arm draped possessively over his chest. She was smiling contentedly.

He remembered that at some point during the preceding few hours, he had come to the conclusion that Maya's leg injury in no way impaired her pursuit of more 'physical' exploits. His grin didn't dissipate as he absently ran a finger along Maya's side, enjoying the touch. Huey briefly entertained the whim of just lying there in the comfort and company of the bed. This didn't last long when he remembered why he was here.

Well, the _other_ reason why.

Careful not to wake her, Huey slipped out from underneath her arm and moved towards his clothes. He took a quick glance at his phone as it lay on the floor, peeping out of his jeans pocket. Eleven nineteen. It was still Saturday, just barely. She had informed him as they had made their way back from the tube station that her Luis and her mum were visiting relatives in Sussex and wouldn't be back till the following day. Her father was out on 'business'. She hadn't been more specific than that. Huey suspected she knew more than she was telling but made no effort to pry.

His feet danced lightly on the carpeted floor, the rest of his body moving in sync to slip his clothes back on with as little sound as possible. It was a routine well-practiced with previous encounters with certain females on campus. Unlike them, she wasn't a spy trained by military intelligence, making the use of techniques learned in Covert Exercises seem rather over the top. Yet unlike her, Huey had never felt any kind of urge to stay in the bed afterwards with the previous girls.

Given the manner in which Maya had brought him to her home, it was understandable that she'd neglected to give him the full tour of the house. It mattered very little.. Slipping out of her room, Huey treaded across the hall way very softly. From surveillance intelligence, Huey had a rough idea of the layout of the house and could identify the key areas easily enough, he imagined.

The corridor curved into an L shape, with Maya's room on the shortest side. The longer side had three doors, two on the left which were spaced out by a staircase going up and down. The third door was directly opposite. This door lay slightly ajar and from the off white tiling, Huey could see this was the bathroom. Checking the door on the near side of the staircase resulted in the discovery of Luis' very neat, very ordered room. Although he couldn't be sure in the dim light, Huey was certain that there was a poster of Michael Phelps, the American swimmer plastered on the side of his bed.

He knew the room at the end was the master bedroom from surveillance photos. He spied the lone door at the apex of the staircase on the third floor, the lock glinting in the moonlight. That would be Manuel's office and the probable location of anything worth seeing.

One step at a time, he climbed the short flight of stairs. With each step, he prayed that that Manuel cared enough to fix any squeaky floorboards that could potentially alert Maya to his activity. Those were the longest eight steps of his life and Huey had to take a moment at the top to allow his breath to resume normal cycling.

Pulling his wallet out, he slipped a lock pick set out of the hidden pocket. It would have been too obvious to bring a lock gun along and this would only set him back thirty seconds or so.

Three minutes later, Huey was all but scraping the pick inside the lock, torsion wrench stressing with the pressure his fingers were applying.

A click.

It sounded like a chorus of angels to Huey's tense ears. He pushed the door open slightly, making sure not to hit anything that may have been behind the door. He was in. Fin-a-fucking-ly, he was in.

For an office, it seemed remarkably boring. Granted, most of the offices that Huey frequented were in the field of espionage or medicine, not accounting. Filing cabinets, a computer desk, a few chairs and a dusty metal cupboard. Nothing fancy.

Reaching into his pocket, he undid the hidden zipper in his wallet to remove the small bag of listening devices he'd be using to monitor this office. He pulled out the bag and gazed at what once used to be £8,000 worth of gadgetry, all cracked and smashed into pieces. Huey didn't dare make vocalise his anger but he fumed internally. The act of saving Maya from that yellow harbinger of death earlier had cost him the pack of 10 electronic monitoring devices.

It was fine.

It just meant he would have to adapt.

The two filing cabinets closest to the door were his first port of call. Using the mobile phone as a flashlight, he started to flick through the documents inside, taking special care to snap high resolution photos of anything he thought related to Ricardo Mosquera or the Calacito Cartel.

Huey wasn't an accountant. He didn't know what these figures and shorthand meant just by looking at them. Both filing cabinets empty, he had taken six or seven photos of tax returns and licenses relating to Mosquera's nightclub.

Doing his best to step around the uncomfortable looking chairs, Huey's attention focused on the desktop computer sat on the rather ugly desk. The moment he nudged the mouse, the room was illuminated by the computer coming back to life from its hibernation. A desktop screen blared at Huey, whose eyes had to take a couple of moments to get used to the now bright environment.

Smiling to himself, he produced his wallet from his jeans once more and slipped out the final item: a small USB drive. It seemed that the computer was in fact connected to the internet. The glowing yellow light on the back of the PC attested to that. Taking a few seconds to root around in his hard drive, Huey found that Manuel's computer wasn't connected to the same network as the other computers in the house, explaining why the VNC program hadn't picked it up. In addition, the files and folders all demanded a secondary password when Huey tried to access them.

Passwords meant one thing: useful information.

He didn't know whether or not the USB device he held in his hand had also been damaged in the tumble earlier. He wouldn't know until he tried. Plugging it in, Huey let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding as the device come to life on screen. It quickly began to install a program which would monitor and send all the information to the workstation which Gabriella had set up in the house. There, they could decrypt the protected files and find out what they needed.

Less than 40% in, Huey heard the last thing that any male teenage spy would have wanted to hear: the sound of Manuel's car pulling into the gravel driveway. Huey didn't know what was worse, the fact that he was stuck in the office of a man with connections to a dangerous drug cartel with –he checked the computer screen- two minutes to go till program completion or the fact that he was stuck in the office of a man whose daughter now lay in post-coital slumber.

Either way, he'd be utterly buggered if he didn't think fast. The monitor was the first thing to be switched off as Huey's heart pounded in his ears. He timed the closing of the office door just right as to be drowned out by the noise of Manuel opening and closing the front door.

He could hear the heavy gait of the man as he trundled up the stairs. With moments to spare, Huey flung himself into the cupboard as the sound of jangling keys grew louder and louder. The light flicked on and Huey, peeking out through the slits in the cupboard door, gazed upon the portly brown haired man who had set his briefcase down upon one of the uncomfortable looking chairs. Simultaneously holding in a sneeze and bracing himself against the side of the cupboard, Huey momentarily reflected upon the absurdity of the situation. Here he was, hiding from a man who looked as though a decision to wear both a belt and suspenders on the same day would cause him to turn into sausage links and he himself was precariously balancing on top of a pack of dust covered ACCA books.

Huey was snapped out of his musings by the sound of a phone ringtone. His sphincter clenched with the force of one thousand suns fearing that it could be his. Gladly, it was not his. For one, his phone was on flight mode which would prevent such occurences. Two, he wasn't hearing the soothing tones of Moonlight Sonata. The classic Nokia theme tune rang through the room and Manuel answered the old vibrating phone, the thick Colombian accent with which he spoke Spanish straining Huey slightly.

"Hello? No, no we can't change it." Manuel moved to unclip his briefcase. Reading off of the documents produced from inside, his tone began to contain a more worried note. "Yes, it's understandable for anyone. We have to keep the club as clean as possible and that means that we have to keep it at the garage. All the excess goes through the club and the government is less likely to come snooping around. You know this Ricardo, that's why we do this. Don't let the Spaniards dictate how you run your operation. No, I don't have it. It's in my car. I will call you back."

He ended the call and slammed the phone on his desk before storming out the door, visibly angry. Huey waited until he could hear the man descend the second set of stairs before he emerged, coughing from the cupboard. The computer blinked on as he fiddled with the monitor. The program had finished installing and he ripped out the USB without safely ejecting, he was in that much of a rush. He didn't have time to take pictures of the documents in the briefcase but he quickly scanned through them, finding the address of the garage that had been the topic of conversation.

He had just gotten out of the office when he heard the car door slam. It made him jump slightly as he vaulted down the stairs and into the bathroom. In here, he was safe. This security lasted all of two seconds as he heard the sound of the bathroom door handle being opened. Without missing a beat, Huey flung open the window.

Gripping the edge of the window frame, Huey launched himself out of the bathroom and onto the grass behind the house. Checking that he still had all his major organs, he let out a sigh of relief as he shimmied in between the fences which separated the homes from the street and into freedom.

He had a garage to check out.


End file.
